This officer certainly didn't sound like a fool. He was talking again.
"It'll be dark soon. We'll want a lantern about here, so you can all see the map. You, cut me a support-two saplings, a head taller than you are. We'll notch and wedge them here to hold up what's left of this beam, and hang the lantern from it about here. Captain, more wine!"
Rotting wood groaned as booted feet moved, there was a clink of metal as flask met flagon, and someone called, "Meat ready soon, sir!" A fifth voice. Of course.
Lady Desna, I know not what I did to displease you, but-
"Not much of a table for the map, sir."
"Agreed, but if we pin it yonder with your dagger, and here with mine, and Vrail here holds the far end, we can have a quick look before eating. Shift that tangle out of the way, will you?"
This was it. The unpinned end of the cloth map in his hand, the captain kicked at the tree branches Tantaerra had pulled down to hide them, without really looking. They didn't budge as he wanted them to, of course, so he turned, bent to tug them aside-and looked right into Tantaerra's eyes.
The Molthuni's own eyes widened, his mouth dropped open for a shout-and The Masked put the tip of his sword into it in a deft upward thrust, then pulled.
Spewing blood over Tantaerra, the captain toppled forward onto the tangled branches and the burnt spar-end supporting them. They promptly collapsed, spilling the dying man head first down into the hole over Tantaerra.
"Wha-" the startled commander began. The Masked didn't wait for him to say any more, but thrust upward through the cloth map.
The man was fast, rearing back and flinging the flagon clangingly aside to get at his own sword, but The Masked had already hissed, "Ankles!" at Tantaerra, and she knew just what to do.
She sprang at those muddy boots, one of the smallest chimney stones in hand, and slammed against the officer's ankles. When he didn't topple, but stood planted solidly, she hammered at his toes with the stone.
He howled and hopped back-and she thrust the stone right under one of his descending feet.
This time he toppled helplessly, with a yell, the stone bouncing and rolling, and Tantaerra stabbed his face and throat repeatedly and rushed on, because she had to get to the two leaning and cocked crossbows across the ruin before the three Molthuni soldiers did-and they'd left the cook-fire to charge, swords coming out.
The Masked was clambering up out of the hole in a flapping chaos of rippling, still-impaled map, and his emergence and Tantaerra's tiny stature distracted the foremost Molthuni from her for an instant.
Tantaerra used it to dive headlong into the bows, knocking them over and slashing at their strings with her dagger. She heard one part with a twang as she rebounded off the wall and rolled under the boots of the Molthuni soldier. A boot came down on her ribs, making him stumble, and The Masked thrust his blade into the man.
The man's armor-chain over stout leather-stopped it from sinking in, but the sword point drove the man's breath out of him explosively, along with some wine, and he sprawled helplessly forward, slamming into The Masked's good shoulder.
The impact made The Masked roar in pain, and reel on his feet. Which meant the winded Molthuni took the brunt of the second Molthuni soldier's vicious slash.
The Masked staggered forward, trying to use his newly acquired meat shield as a battering ram, but the man fell from his shoulder onto the legs and midsection of the second Molthuni soldier, driving both Molthuni to the ground with The Masked on top of them.
The third Molthuni had lost a few moments setting the skillet with meat sizzling in it back down on the fire-grate, and so was clear of the three men writhing on the ground right in front of him. Yet he'd been drawing his sword and launching himself into a charge, and was now just as hastily skidding to a halt to avoid tripping over the three men.
Which gave Tantaerra time enough to throw one unloaded and ruined crossbow and then the other at his face. The first missed, but the second struck home, glancing off the man's head and blinding him just long enough that his sword was down and aside and his eyes creased shut as the dagger she threw next came spinning in to bite at his throat.
It glanced off and away, too, but cut him, blood spurting. He clapped a hand to his throat and staggered, stepping on a downed Molthuni's leg and wavering, sword waving as he fought for balance-and Tantaerra's second dagger, arriving with her behind it in a leap, sliced open his throat properly and sent him blundering into a nearby tree in a choking explosion of gore.
Tantaerra saw no sixth or seventh Molthuni in sight as she landed, so she spun around, raced back to the three men struggling on the ground, and dealt with two more Molthuni throats.
Then she hastened around the ruin, panting hard, making sure the soldiers were dead. There were no war-horns or shouts from the forest around, and no sign that there'd been other Molthuni-but who knew how many Nirmathi were watching from the trees?
When she got back to him, The Masked had crawled off the dead soldiers and clawed his way upright against one of the walls.
She plucked what was left of the bloody map-southern Nirmathas, in some detail, so worth keeping-off the end of his blade, wiped it clean on the hair of the one Molthuni whose helm had fallen off, and held it out to The Masked.
"Stow and carry this, will you? I'll serve us wine and meat in a moment."
The Masked tried to laugh, but it obviously hurt, so he settled for saying, "You are a treasure."
"Yes," Tantaerra told him brightly, "but whose?"
He just shook his head, so she added, "Check them all for anything useful, will you? Belt flasks, nice daggers, rope, food …that sort of thing."
"Searching the corpses, sir," he replied, and left the wall with a groan, heading for the body of the commander.
"We'll eat as we walk," she told him, as crisply as if she'd been giving orders for years. "I want to be far from here by nightfall."
The Masked looked up at the darkening sky, nodded, and went back to plundering the fallen.
When he was done, he sheathed his sword in favor of one still-warm skillet.
"It's a weapon," he told Tantaerra through his last piece of meat, in answer to the look she gave him.
She sighed. "No doubt we'll need it. Now, what's our best way on from here?"
The masked man pointed into the trees with the skillet, and they staggered into the forest.
∗ ∗ ∗
It was just a hollow in the depths of the forest, where a long-ago tree's roots had torn up earth when it had toppled, but it would have to do. Exhausted and near blind under the trees with full night fallen, they could go no farther. They huddled together and drank wine.
"It'll deaden the pain," Tantaerra told The Masked, passing him the last flask.
"For you, perhaps," he growled, hunched over the skillet in his lap. He wasn't even lifting his right arm now; it dangled at his side, useless, as if dead. The rest of him didn't look much better.
"Try to lie down," she told him, scrambling up. "Here, I'll help. If I-"
The thump was dull, a small and quiet sound, but The Masked fell sideways in slack-jawed silence.
Leaving Tantaerra staring at the face of the man who'd felled him from behind. An all-too-familiar face that was now giving her a half-smile over the daggers put to her throat.
"Orivin Ahrkholm, at your service," he said politely.
Tantaerra ducked away in a roll, trying to-
The thump of a dagger hilt clubbing a head is much louder when you hear it inside your own skull.